Warwick Gardens
Warwick Gardens is a relatively short street, but house-building along its length took nearly fifty years to complete, and its history illustrates many of the problems of
urban development in far-flung outskirts of the
metropolis. Building began in 1822, at its northern end,
when an elongated ‘square’ called Warwick Square was
laid out, but this was never finished and eventually the
roadway was extended as far south as Pembroke Gardens
under the name of Warwick Gardens. To the south of
Pembroke Gardens, in the curved part of the street, the
terrace of houses on the south-west side of the curve was
originally called Warwick Crescent while the houses on
the opposite side were briefly and very confusingly known
as Warwick Gardens East. In 1869, when all of the houses
along the street had at last been completed, the name
Warwick Gardens was adopted for its entire length. The
present numbers were assigned in two stages, those to the
north of Pembroke Gardens in 1864 and the remainder
in 1869.
By the early 1820s the ill-fated project at Edwardes
Square was at last acquiring some momentum, and Lord
Kensington decided to release his remaining land with a
frontage to the Hammersmith Road (now Kensington
High Street) for building development. Accordingly in
July and August 1822 respectively he entered into agreements for the building of Kensington Crescent (see below)
and Warwick Square. The land on which the latter was
intended to be laid out consisted of eight acres bounded
on the east by what is now the roadway of St. Mary Abbot's
Place, on the south by the line of Pembroke Gardens, and
on the west by Warwick Road (which was at first and very
briefly known as Moiety Road, presumably because the
boundary between this land and that let for the building
of Kensington Crescent to the west ran down the middle
of the road). (ref. 167)
The developers to whom the building of Warwick
Square was entrusted were Joseph and Thomas Brindley.
Although usually described as builders in the documents
relating to this speculation, the Brindleys were in reality
large-scale entrepreneurs with many interests, including
a stake in the promotion of the Kensington Canal (see page
322). Building was only a sideline which developed from
their involvement as builders' suppliers in the timber trade
and in the allied trades of brickmaking and lime-burning.
Shipbuilding was, however, their principal occupation,
their main yards being at Frindsbury on the Medway,
where during the Napoleonic Wars they had built a number of men-at-war. They also owned considerable estates,
both freehold and leasehold, including a five-hundred-acre farm at Frindsbury, and they had wharves on the
Thames, the Medway and at the Regent's Park canal
basin. (ref. 168)
Under the terms of their agreement with Lord Kensington the Brindleys contracted to spend at least £14,000 in
building not less than fifteen and not more than twenty-three houses, each to contain a minimum of ten rooms.
All the houses were to be completed within seven years
and erected under the supervision of Lord Kensington's
surveyor, William Cutbush, according to plans and elevations approved by him. Lord Kensington agreed to grant
leases to the Brindleys or their nominees for ninety-nine
years from Michaelmas 1822 or equivalent terms at an
annual rent which was not to exceed 15s. per foot frontage.
He also undertook to lay out a fifty-foot-wide road along
the eastern boundary of the site parallel with the wall of
the Horticultural Society's garden; and as there was an
open sewer there, to construct a mound on the east side
of this road which he would plant with ‘healthy forest
trees’ in order to conceal the sewer. Less than a year after
being signed this agreement ‘in so far as it related to the
Mode and Scale of building the houses’ was modified by
a further agreement of July 1823 of which no details are
known. (ref. 169)
On 13 September 1822 the Brindleys began to lay out
the site for building according to a plan prepared by Cutbush. (ref. 167) This has not survived, but a plan of 1841 by Cutbush probably represents the original intention. This
shows a long, narrow ‘square’ (named Warwick Square,
no doubt, after the Earls of Warwick and Holland, former
owners of the estate) opening off the Hammersmith Road,
and extending as far south as the present-day course of
Pembroke Gardens. (ref. 170)
In 1825 Lord Kensington offered to present a site for
a church at the south end of the square, (ref. 171) but this proposal
was given up in 1826, probably on account of the financial
misfortunes of the Brindleys which are described below,
and the new church was built on Lord Holland's estate
as St. Barnabas's, Addison Road. (ref. 172)
The Brindleys engaged Cutbush on their own account
to prepare the designs of the houses to be built, for which
he later claimed a fee of £50. They also employed him
to organize the building of the carcases of the houses, and
his subsequent claim for digging the foundations and for
bricklayer's, carpenter's and mason's work amounted to
£740, most of the materials being evidently supplied by
the Brindleys. Cutbush also designed and built a lodge
(now demolished) at the entrance to the square, which he
later used as his ‘counting house’ or office. (ref. 173)
By October 1824 the first houses had been covered-in,
and Lord Kensington therefore granted leases to the Brindleys of Nos. 1, 2 and 3 Warwick Square East, now Nos. 1–5
(odd) Warwick Gardens, at an annual ground rent of £10
per house. (ref. 174) As it was the Brindleys' practice ‘to barter
their work as builders with plumbers, plasterers and others
who were to complete the Houses erected by them’, they
placed contracts for this purpose with John Smith,
plasterer, W. Dutton, plumber and painter, and Thomas
Blackford, smith, for the payment of each of whom the
Brindleys undertook to secure a ground lease of one house
from Lord Kensington. (ref. 175)
Work accordingly began on the completion of the three
houses on the east side, whilst on the west side the Brindleys started to erect five carcases; and in June 1825 Lord
Kensington executed the lease of No. 1 Warwick Square
West (later No. 2 Warwick Gardens, now demolished) to
Cutbush, who had been nominated as the lessee by the
Brindleys in part payment for his services to them. (ref. 176) By
August, however, the Brindleys owed Lord Kensington
over £1,500 for bricks made upon an adjoining part of his
estate, and when they applied to him on behalf of Smith,
Dutton and Blackford for leases of three of the carcases
on the west side, he refused to comply, alleging that the
houses in question were still ‘in a very unfinished state’
and not even protected from the weather. Thereupon
Smith, Dutton and Blackford refused to continue to work
on the houses on the east side. (ref. 177)
The underlying cause of these problems was the credit
crisis which first became apparent towards the autumn of
1825, (ref. 178) and which helped to precipitate the collapse of
the great post-war building boom. In February 1826 the
Brindleys were declared bankrupt with total debts of over
£66,000. Most of these debts were not associated with the
speculation in Warwick Square, but they did include
£1,387 owed to Lord Kensington. The Brindleys' assets
(including debts owed to them), however, were valued at
£71,000, leaving a balance in their favour of some
£5,000. (ref. 179)
In March 1826 the Brindleys' estates were conveyed to
three assignees in bankruptcy, one being John Nash, the
architect, to whom they owed money in connection with
their business interests at the Regent's Canal basin. (ref. 180) The
assignees quickly made arrangements to complete the two
unfinished houses on the east side, (ref. 181) one house (now No. 3
Warwick Gardens) having been completed but not
occupied before the Brindleys' bankruptcy. But Lord
Kensington had other ideas and served them with a
declaration of ejectment on the grounds of a breach of the
original building agreement. Nash and the other assignees
riposted with a complaint in Chancery requesting an
injunction to restrain Lord Kensington, but they were
unsuccessful and in November he obtained possession.
Two months later the assignees started another suit to
obtain an injunction to prevent Lord Kensington from
selling the houses. (ref. 182)
After a delay of over two years the whole matter was
settled out of court in March 1829. Possession of one of
the two disputed houses (now No. 5) was confirmed to
Lord Kensington, who agreed that if within six months
the assignees could find a purchaser to complete the other
one (No. 1), he would grant a new lease of it; but if they
failed the house was to revert to him. The assignees also
surrendered all their interest in the remaining
undeveloped land covered by the original agreement of
1822 with the Brindleys. (ref. 183)
Figure 111:
Nos. 15 and 33 Warwick Gardens, elevations. No. 15, Thomas Earle, builder, ? Martin J. Stutely, architect 1851; No.
33, Samuel Johns, builder, 1858
The assignees in fact found a purchaser for No. 1 in
John Timbs, a builder from Clerkenwell, to whom Lord
Kensington, with their consent, granted a lease towards
the end of 1829. (ref. 184) At about the same time he also found
a lessee for No. 5 in Anthony Aslat, a Hammersmith
builder; (ref. 185) but (perhaps because of the open sewer at the
end of the back gardens here, which he had evidently never
screened with the stipulated mound and trees) he had to
wait for ten years for a lessee for the remaining two plots
in the range (the sites of Nos. 7 and 9), in Richard Stanham
of Edwardes Terrace, builder. (ref. 186)
On the west side, where the five houses (all now demolished) begun by the Brindleys backed on to Warwick
Road, the lease of the northernmost (later No. 2 Warwick
Gardens) was confirmed to Cutbush. (ref. 187) Leases of the other
four houses in the range were all granted in 1829–30—No. 4 to George Hodgkinson Barrow (occupation unknown). No. 6 to John Smith of Rupert Street, Haymarket, bricklayer and plasterer, and Nos. 8 and 10 to
John Timbs. (ref. 188)
Even the surviving eastern range (Plate 112b) is only
a fragment of Cutbush's original intention for Warwick
Square. As in his contemporaneous Kensington Crescent,
Nos. 1–9 (odd) Warwick Gardens have some of the trappings of Nash's terraces around Regent's Park applied to
the standard late-Georgian terrace, but the bowed northern end (No. 1) and the pedimented projection of No. 3
are not echoed at the southern end, and the whole group
has an air of being unfinished which accurately reflects
its history.
The projected garden in the centre seems never to have
been formed, but the space for it was partially utilized in
1934, when the polished marble column which had stood
in Kensington High Street near the parish church had to
be removed as part of a road-widening scheme and was
re-erected in Warwick Gardens with a small traffic island
around it. The column, designed by H. L. Florence, had
originally been erected in memory of Queen Victoria by
the inhabitants of Kensington. (ref. 189)
Although by the settlement of 1829 with the Brindleys’
assignees Lord Kensington had regained possession of all
the remaining undeveloped land covered by the agreement
of 1822, twenty years elapsed before he found a speculator
willing to complete the Brindleys' take. This was Thomas
Earle, who in 1842–4 had been the principal contractor
for the building of the West London Railway (see page
325), and who in November 1849 agreed to take these four
acres and build at least twenty houses. (ref. 190)
In January 1850 Martin Joseph Stutely, who had replaced William Cutbush as Lord Kensington's surveyor
about 1844 (see page 243), applied to the Metropolitan
Commissioners of Sewers for permission to build a sewer
along Warwick Gardens, and soon afterwards house-building began under the direction of John Brooks, a
builder who acted as ‘agent’ for Earle. (ref. 191)
In 1851–2 leases of six houses on the east side were granted to Earle or his nominees. (ref. 192) This group of houses,
Nos. 11–21 (odd) Warwick Gardens, consists of three
pairs of stuccoed villas, each with a semi-basement, three
full storeys and a low slated roof with overhanging eaves
(fig. 111a). They exhibit a variety of façade designs in a
basic Italianate idiom, perhaps supplied by Stutely, who
had, as ‘the architect’, given notice to the district surveyor
of the commencement of building operations by Earle in
Warwick Road nearby. (ref. 193) The southern pairs of houses
were progressively stepped forward as the width of the
roadway was reduced once the concept of a square had
been abandoned. Of these houses, No. 17 was at first in
Earle's own occupation. (ref. 36)
On the west side the artist Richard Redgrave, who lived
at No. 27 Hyde Park Gate, was Earle's nominee in 1855
for the grant of the leases of three semi-detached houses,
and two of his sisters were granted the lease of a fourth. (ref. 194)
These houses, later Nos. 12–18 (even), were demolished
in about 1930.
In the autumn of 1855 Thomas Earle, who four years
earlier had asserted that he employed 356 men, (ref. 195) suffered
the same fate as the Brindleys before him when he was
declared bankrupt. (ref. 196) Two more leases were, however,
granted at the nomination of his assignees in October and
November of that year, one of them to the builder Richard
Stanham, who had earlier been the lessee of Nos. 7 and
9. (ref. 197) They were of Nos. 23 and 25, another pair of houses
of similar design to their neighbours to the north.
Figure 112:
No. 35 Pembroke Gardens, elevation. Samuel Johns, builder, 1860
After this second débâcle the new Lord Kensington (the
second Baron having died in 1852) seems to have followed
the example of his father in regaining possession of the
remaining undeveloped land, for in December 1856
another builder, Samuel Johns, entered into an agreement
with him to take over the speculation. (ref. 198) Johns, who at
first had an address in Leinster Street, Paddington, and
later in Harrow Road, proved to be a more reliable operator, or perhaps he was merely lucky in catching the beginnings of a prolonged building boom shortly after
commencing operations here. At all events he quickly built
four more pairs of houses on the east side of Warwick
Gardens, Nos. 27–41 (odd), of which Lord Kensington
granted leases to him or his son, Henry William Johns,
in 1858–9. (ref. 199) They are houses with fully stuccoed façades
similar to Earle's houses further north but more uniform
in their detailing (fig. 111b). Soon afterwards Johns built
seven more pairs on the west side, Nos. 20–46 (even) (Plate
113c), all now demolished, the leases of these being granted to him in 1860–1. (ref. 200) By 1862 all the houses on both
sides of Warwick Gardens as far as Pembroke Gardens
were inhabited. (ref. 36)
Round the corner on the north side of Pembroke
Gardens Johns built a detached house for his own occupation, the lease of which was granted to him in 1860. (ref. 201) This
pleasant villa with old-fashioned detailing for its date was
originally called Garibaldi Villa and is now No. 35 Pembroke Gardens (fig. 112).
Except for No. 29, which was destroyed by enemy
action in the war of 1939–45, all the houses on the east
side of Warwick Gardens between Kensington High Street
and Pembroke Gardens still survive. No. 11 was the home
of G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936), the poet, novelist and
critic, during his childhood and until his marriage in
1901. (ref. 202)
The artist William Holman Hunt occupied the first
house on the west side, No. 2 (now demolished), at the
time of the census of 1881, but his residence there was
probably brief as he is not listed at the address in directories, and later in the same year he purchased Draycott
Lodge, Fulham, where he was to live for over twenty
years. (ref. 203)
All the houses on the west side as far south as Pembroke
Gardens have been demolished and replaced by blocks of
flats. These were erected by the Prudential Assurance
Company, which acquired the freehold of the site after
the sale of this part of the Edwardes estate in 1903. The
process began in 1926–7 with the demolition of Nos. 2–10
(even) and the building of the first of three neo-Georgian
red-brick blocks called St. Mary Abbot's Court. This one
has a frontage to Kensington High Street with shops and
a bank at ground-floor level. The joint architects for the
company were C. H. Roberts and Messrs. Joseph. The
other blocks of the same name and of similar design were
erected in 1930–3 and 1933–5 in place respectively of
Nos. 12–18 and 20–26 (even). In 1970–1 Durrels House,
which is also brick-faced, but in a plainer modern style,
replaced Nos. 28–46 (even). The design was supplied by
L. H. Nixon of the company's Architect's Department. (ref. 204)
In the curved part of Warwick Gardens, to the south
of Pembroke Gardens, building began in the late 1850s
on the south-west side. Here the builder James Hall erected twenty-seven houses, numbered at first as 1–27
Warwick Crescent from south to north, but renumbered
in 1869 as 50–102 (even) Warwick Gardens from north
to south (Plate 113b). Despite their original name the
houses here do not form a true crescent but are arranged
in three straight terraces at a slight angle to each other.
A small gap between Nos. 76 and 78 led to a vacant triangular site at the rear which was not part of the ground
taken by Hall and was soon afterwards let to the Kensington Vestry as a site for a depot (see page 283). For the
most part Hall built conventional two-bay terraced houses
containing a basement and three main storeys with a bay
window on the basement and ground floor and grey brick
façdes with stucco dressings above. Occasionally a
double-fronted house is included in the sequence, wider
but shallower than its neighbours. Hall was granted leases
of all the houses in 1859, (ref. 205) but some were not occupied
until 1866. (ref. 36) By this time Hall himself had been declared
bankrupt, largely as a result of over-extending himself on
the Holland estate to the north of Kensington High Street,
which had been his principal sphere of operations over
the preceding decade, (ref. 206) and several of the houses he had
built in Warwick Gardens were then in the leasehold
ownership of Coutts Bank. (ref. 207) At that time the site of St.
Barnabas's Church House (now the New Apostolic
Church) to the north of No. 50 was still vacant, having
originally been intended for an extension of the roadway
of Pembroke Gardens as far as Warwick Road, but the
small Gothic structure (Plate 113c), which served both as
a parish hall and as an additional church for the large congregation of St. Barnabas's, was built there shortly afterwards under a building lease granted in June 1868. (ref. 208) Most
of Hall's houses survive, but Nos. 82–88 (even) were damaged during the war of 1939–45 and were replaced in 1949–52 by flat-fronted brick houses to the designs of Alexander
G. Black, architect. (ref. 209)
The north-west side of the curve, opposite Hall's
houses, was built up in the 1860s. The first leases to be
granted here were of Nos. 67–73 (odd) in December
1863. (ref. 210) The lessee was Peter Keeley, the publican at the
nearby Kensington Arms public house in Warwick Road,
and the builder was probably Henry William Johns' to
whom leases of Nos. 63 and 65 were granted in March
1866. (ref. 211) These three pairs of houses are virtually indentical,
each house having a side entrance, a stuccoed semi-basement and ground floor with a bay window, and two
brick-faced storeys above with stucco dressings that have
been drastically ‘scraped’ in recent years. To their north
two short terraces of five houses each, Nos. 43–51 and 53–61 (odd), were built by the prominent Kensington
builders, Thomas Huggett and Thomas Hussey, evidently
acting in partnership, Hussey being granted leases of
Nos. 43–51 and Huggett of Nos. 53–61, all in 1867. (ref. 212)
These houses are similar to Johns' further to the south,
though with more prominent columned porches. Apart
from No. 43, which has been much simplified and possibly
largely rebuilt, and No. 61, which has been demolished,
their decorative features have also been better preserved.
All the houses in this part of the street were occupied by
1870, when the long saga of the original development of
Warwick Gardens came to an end. The first occupant of
No. 59, from 1868 to his death there in 1870, was the sporting writer Henry Hall Dixon (‘The Druid’). (ref. 213)
To the north of No. 43 the large plot at the south corner
with Pembroke Gardens was occupied by a Wesleyan
chapel (see page 393) until its demolition in 1927. It was
replaced by three pairs of semi-detached houses, Nos. 41A
and 41B Warwick Gardens and 31–34 Pembroke Gardens,
which were designed in an attractive amalgam of styles
by the Estate Department of the Prudential Assurance
Company, Chief Surveyor G. A. Coombe (Plate 114a).
They have basement garages which are entered from a
communal courtyard at the rear, and the ground floors
are supported by steel and concrete rafts, an arrangement
which was then described as a ‘very novel’ experiment.
The builders were James Smith and Sons (Norwood)
Limited. (ref. 214) Nos. 33 and 34 Pembroke Gardens were virtually completely rebuilt to their original designs after the
war of 1939–45, in which they had been severely damaged
by enemy action.
Kensington Crescent
In July 1822 Lord Kensington agreed to let some nine
acres of land on the south side of the Hammersmith Road,
bounded on the west by the Counter's Creek sewer and
on the east by what is now Warwick Road, and extending
some 650 feet southwards from the main road. (ref. 215) The
developer was Adam Tirrell, variously described as of
Clerkenwell, baker, (ref. 216) of Kensington, gentleman or
builder, (ref. 217) or of Lee in Kent, farmer. (ref. 218) His term was for
ninety-nine years from Lady Day 1822, and the rent was
to rise from £75 per annum in 1824 to £300 in 1827. (ref. 219)
Tirrell quickly started to build a range of fourteen substantial houses (Nos. 1–14 Kensington Crescent, now
demolished), the carcases of which Lord Kensington
leased to him in March 1825. (ref. 220) Soon afterwards Tirrell
mortgaged several of these houses for £900 (ref. 221) and under-leased six of them, three of his sub-lessees being tradesmen
who had done part of the building work for him, namely
Thomas Kitson of Holborn and William George Wilmot
of Kensington, both plumbers, and John Buckingham of
Kensington Place, carpenter. (ref. 222)
Tirrell was pre-eminently a speculator looking for a
quick return, for in June 1823 (within less than a year of
his agreement with Lord Kensington) he had assigned all
the rest of his land to G. T. R. Reynal of Camberwell,
esquire. (ref. 223) In April 1827 Lord Kensington granted Reynal
leases of another fourteen houses (Nos. 15–28 Kensington
Crescent, also demolished) and of all the remaining land
originally taken by Tirrell. (ref. 224) A party to these leases was
John Plaskett of Gracechurch Street, a City merchant who
must have had a considerable financial stake in the building of the crescent. In September of the same year the
local builder Benjamin Clutterbuck applied on Plaskett's
behalf to the Westminster Commissioners of Sewers for
permission to lay drains from all twenty-eight houses into
a sewer which was about to be constructed at the back
of the crescent. (ref. 225)
Kensington Crescent (Plate 112a) originally consisted
of two slightly curved ranges each of fourteen houses, set
back from the Hammersmith Road behind a shallow lawn
and shrubbery. The two ranges were separated by a road
which was intended to lead southwards into a network of
narrow streets lined with some eighty houses. Only a hand-ful of these, in fact, ever materialized, all on or near the
Warwick Road frontage (see page 287). The architect of
the handsome stucco-faced four-storey houses in the
crescent was evidently Lord Kensington's surveyor, William Cutbush, who designed the very similar houses in
the adjacent Warwick Square (now Warwick Gardens, see
above) and whose signature appears on a layout plan for
Tirrell's ‘take’. (ref. 226)
Although leases of all twenty-eight houses had been
granted within five years of the date of the original building
agreement, Kensington Crescent never archieved much
distinction. In 1830 only half a dozen houses were in
occupation, and even in 1835 three of them were still
empty. (ref. 36) There were a number of factors which made it
unlikely that the crescent would ever become a desirable
place of residence. The large basin of the Kensington
Canal, which was constructed in the same years that the
crescent was being erected, occupied an area a short distance to the south, there were plans for a railway from
Willesden running near or even through the crescent, and
there were constant problems of surface water drainage
(such as ‘a vast quantity of stagnant water and other offensive matter’ nearby in 1842 (ref. 227) ). When the railway was
finally built in 1836–44 the western most house was demolished to make way for it, and during the construction of
more lines for the West London Extension Railway in
1859–63 three more houses were demolished. At the same
time the vacant ground between the crescent and the canal
basin was used for an enormous coal depot, the sidings
of which extended to within less than a hundred feet of
the back gardens of the crescent.
Lord Kensington, the original progenitor of the
crescent, lived out his last miserable penniless years at
No. 23 from at least 1845 until his death there on 10
August 1852. (ref. 228) A resident of much greater note was the
German-born electrical engineer (Sir) William Siemens,
who lived at No. 1 (formerly the residence of the contractor Thomas Earle) from 1853 until his marriage in 1859. (ref. 229)
Gottfried Semper, the German refugee architect who was
a member of the Science and Art Department during the
formative years of the South Kensington Museum, stayed
with Siemens in 1853–5. Kenneth Grahame, author of The Wind in the Willows and Secretary of the Bank of England,
lived at No. 5 from 1895 to 1900. (ref. 230)
Isolated and increasingly forlorn, the remaining portion
of Kensington Crescent was demolished in the mid 1930s.
Charles House, a large block of offices now occupied by
government departments, was built on the site in 1948–50
to the designs of Arthur S. Ash. (ref. 231)